By Chitra Gopalakrishnan

We three sisters, each born five years apart, reunite in 2024 after a decade of separation. On the evening of January sixth, to be exact, we gather in New Delhi’s Hauz Khas, where our youngest sister, Neela, who turned thirty-five just two months ago, lies wrapped in a coarse, bright white sheet on the floor of her home. In death, she is a picture of repose. Her eyes are closed, and her fair face, evenly adorned with turmeric and sandalwood, is composed. Her ears are aglow with lustrous pearl earrings, and her nostrils are filled with soft cotton wads. It lends her an angelic appearance. Surfaces lie; they don’t reflect a person’s inner life.

A tall, glowing brass lamp stands at her head in the darkening evening. Its flickering wick, the Hindu symbol of the soul’s radiance, is the only luminous thing in the pitch-dark landscape that flounders under a power outage, a complete blackout, and pelting rain. My elder sister Kamala and I are unable to find any candles or flashlights, and the power inverter has blown its fuse. The heavy, dark, and dense atmosphere sets the tone for the evening, for our reunion, our farewell. The tick-tock of the enormous grandfather clock in the room courses through our bodies, quickens our heartbeats, and meddles with our minds, confusing and cleaving them by turns. It is fascinating how an inanimate object can evoke new sensations and meanings within us.

At seven p.m., the winds push the rain into irregular lines, forcing its restless energy indoors. We have left the main door and windows open because we cannot bear the claustrophobia of the enclosed living room. The cold night, with its dripping trails of water, crashes against us. It wicks at our body heat, and we shiver despite our pashmina shawls. Perhaps this is why Kamala and I, both dressed in white as tradition dictates, sit beside Neela, coiled like springs. Kamala wears traditional attire, complete with silver hoop earrings, a long silver zan that gives her a poised appearance, her hair in a top knot, and thin silver bangles. My outfit is Western-inspired, paired with contemporary accessories like platinum danglers and a choker. While our white clothes are appropriate for the occasion, they seem to invite the cold rather than the peace that they are meant to bring.

There is another reason for our unease: this is our childhood home, our mother’s home, where she raised us single-handedly, and Neela now owns it. As we sit cross-legged on the floor, our attention captive, we catch glimpses of our past life. It feels like waking ghosts. Images and characters flit between the dark and dim light, reminiscent of a shadow puppetry show. However, when reality collides with our imagined memories, we realise this is not the home we once knew and cherished. The familiar elements are missing: sagging cushions, frayed sofas, the smells of cooking and incense, family photos, jasmine vines on old bamboo racks, and mangy dogs with chewed ears on the portico. This decluttered space, rearranged in texture and spirit, adorned with abstract paintings, feels like a tasteful space, but it is impersonal and sterile.

Neela’s only mourners are frogs, their croaking making silence not just fitting but urgently necessary. It allows us to silence our history and its emotional complexities: love, loss, resentment, regret, and nostalgia. “I don’t want to linger any longer than necessary,” I say to Kamala after a while, bothered by the drabness and dispiritedness of our surroundings, by our peculiar animosity that feels both direct and oblique, poisonous yet harmless, repressed yet effervescent. I know I sound ungrateful. “We can’t be rescued from the pain of our past in a single evening, and the balance between us and Neela won’t be evened out either. The cruelties and miseries she inflicted upon us will take time to heal.” Kamala is silent. Her face is stiff, speckled with red that seems to spread, and her jaw is rigid. I know that bringing up our dead sister is a delicate matter. Is Kamala’s silence an indication of reproach, a subtle way of saying, “Enough now, she is dead, poor thing”? I notice her flicking the stray strands of hair from her forehead abruptly. Does it imply “I am uncertain and restless as well”? I can’t decipher it. She gazes vacantly outside. I follow her eyes. The trees, grass, shrubs, flowers, gravel, mud, asphalt, and overhead wires—familiar to me from childhood—blur into gauzy impressions, as if they are being drawn into a dull, neutral oneness of gloom.

The scents of roses and tulsi, which we have strung around Neela’s neck to mask unpleasant odours, mingle with the sandalwood we have applied to her body. We can also detect the damask rose perfume we sprayed on her; it has a sweet, spicy, fruity aroma with honeyed undertones—one we promised to use when we grew up, as it reminded us of Ma. ‘Everlasting Love with Rosa Damascena’ is our signature of sisterhood,” we had declared during happier times, bonding over its name and the fragrant puffs from delicate, stolen perfume bottles. Ma believed she had hidden them well. At that time, Neela was five, I was ten, and Kamala was fifteen. I eventually broke our pinky promise and stopped using it in my teens, mainly out of irritation towards Neela, who, even as a child, relentlessly targeted our vulnerable spots.

I had forgotten about this perfume—its name and its significance in our lives—but Kamala has brought it with her. Does that mean something? Kamala’s eyebrows, drawn together in a thick line across her forehead, remains distant, which makes it difficult for me to ask. Yet I do. “Are you carrying the burden of being the older sister? Are you keeping alive the memories of our mother and the spirit of our sisterhood through this perfume? Or, like me, have you chosen to let go of our childhood and sisterhood?” She shrugs, indicating she’s not ready for a conversation.

****

Neela is found dead by her maid, Kanchan. “The guard and I had to force open a large window to enter the house this afternoon when Neela memsahib did not answer the door. She could have died the previous day, but we have no means to know, as I was on leave,” Kanchan says to each of us on the phone. She comes to meet us as we arrive. Her heavily kohled eyes, dark and direct, display no sadness. Instead, her thin, yellow-and-orange-patterned nylon sari, which flaunts her belly button, and her blouse, cut audaciously front and back, display gaiety, an odd, unexpected, and out-of-place quality given our circumstances. “Pay me my salary now,” she demands, through paan-stained teeth, “and something extra, for I have lost my job for no fault of mine.” We don’t begrudge her lack of love or loyalty.

Kamala and I arrive late afternoon at Neela’s house, past five p.m., as each of our homes is distant. We summon a doctor, relying on the recommendation of the area’s resident welfare association. He arrives, his heavy, wide girth swaying and his black jacket dripping with gloom and rain. “I walked over as I live close by,” he says, his voice gruff. Wheezing, he places his damp brown leather bag beside Neela to examine her. “I attended to her hypertension a year ago. Do you know if she suffered from a heart condition later?” he asks. Seeing our nonplussed expressions, he changes tack to say, “I am putting down her death as fifth January, four p.m., and the cause of death as cardiac arrest.”

After he leaves, we work in silence, to ready Neela for her last rites, talking only when needed. “Look for the gold sari Ma gave her,” Kamala instructs. “Heat water on the gas for her bath,” she orders. “Help me find strings to tie her toes together,” I beseech. “Rub the turmeric and sandalwood paste on her face,” she says. From six p.m. on, into the icy, thickening dark, we work on Neela’s as-yet malleable flesh to get her into a state of cremation-readiness. Then we sit in wait for the doctor and the hearse. 

As we sip tea from a flask I have brought and nibble on digestive biscuits, we decide not to go to the cremation grounds. We agree to inform our relatives who live out of town and in other countries, post messages on social media later, and contact her office, since we know nothing about her colleagues. “It’s raining, it’s night, there’s no electricity, and we feel unsafe,” I explain weakly to the funeral agency manager on the phone. “And women in our community don’t go to cremation sites,” I add. He doesn’t seem to care about my reasoning. “Ma’am, we will only cremate her in the morning, but we will keep her safe until then in an icebox that our hearse will bring to you. If you change your mind about coming tomorrow, please let us know. We will have a stand-in representative conduct the rites for you. Please send a copy of her ID, your ID, and our payment with the driver, and someone can collect her certificate of death later from us,” he says formally and assertively. As an afterthought, he adds, “Do send the doctor’s certificate as well to rule out any complications.”

Post the conversation, we stare unseeingly past her large, open front door as night continues to pour down in long, vertical strands of bluish-black rain. Glossy droplets cling to our skin from the open window, sharp and cold. The night-time shower emits a low, desolate buzz, almost like a murmured apology for our unwanted experience. The chilly air should wash away the stagnant smells of flowers, tulsi, sandalwood, and Rose Damascena, and it does. It brings the fresh aromas of wet grass and earth. But it also carries the stench of the mixed rubbish piled on the roadside, along with the acrid smell of petrol and the pungent odour of diesel—outcomes of vehicles hitting the asphalt near homes, a consequence of a polluted urban environment, even in this upscale neighbourhood. As this smog gives us the feeling of swallowing glass shards, we watch the rain pool into puddles on the unpaved mud track beside the road. The water, dark purple, resembles the colour of gangrene.

It is eleven p.m. when we hear the dreadful horn of the hearse, its broken blasts echoing through the night. As the black van, with its scratched and battered exterior, departs w=hile honking in the steamy darkness, we allow Neela to be taken into her future life in a cold storage compartment. Just then, the electricity unexpectedly returns. The illuminated interiors disconcert me. I awaken to a gnawing guilt for letting Neela go alone, to the horror of realising that my compassion for her as a sister has died, and to the shame of lacking basic humanity. This feeling is visceral and palpable, conflicting with the righteous anger I hold against Neela. As I glance at Kamala, I know she is grappling with similar emotions.

*****

“As a thirty-five-year-old, is Neela’s heart, which ended her earthly life too soon, now open to the world beyond? Has she been reunited with Ma, who died ten years ago, and urged us on her deathbed to mend our ties, to accept Neela as she was, and to allow her a homecoming after her passing? Or is she still trapped between worlds, her sense of self intact, since we haven’t called a pundit to conduct her last rites?” I have no answers. Kamala whispers to me urgently. She has found her voice.

“Don’t you find it strange that none of her neighbours of ten years have shown up to bid farewell? Isn’t it unusual for a close-knit North-Indian community like ours?” Kamala asks, after a breathing space. “As their homes are sunk in rainy darkness, it could be a ready excuse for them. To me, though, their absence speaks of her deceitful and manipulative nature, of her rankling them with it,” I say uncharitably. My bitterness towards Neela returns in minutes; moderation and empathy are no longer active, and my decency finds its limits. “Admit it, we, too, are here not out of love for her; she is inherently unlovable for both of us, but because she has no one. No friends, husband or children. I am sure her soul is already scheming as it plots its way through future wanderings.”

Kamala nods. “What gives Neela the right to pull us into her darkness, to stretch her shadow beyond her life?” Her voice is steady, but I know her too well. I can sense that her calmness is the façade of someone deeply disturbed. My stomach churns with anxiety as I brace myself for the words to come—the fierce emotions I am unprepared to confront, and the sharp pain that the memories of betrayal will bring. 

 “Nirmala,” she continues, “over the years we’ve endured Neela’s small and large cruelties. She revealed our secrets in childhood, spread false tales about us during our adolescence, making our lives miserable, and her unending hostility has chipped away at us. I’m afraid that we will carry this burden for the rest of our lives.” I agree, recalling the deep, intimate wounds she has inflicted on me and on us, her past now colliding with our present. “Yes, Neela has always been a skilled liar,” I reply, but my words feel insufficient.

Without warning, the image of Neela I once knew appears before my eyes. She was a girl with sharp intelligence, capable of reciting verses she had heard just once with perfect enunciation. She could recall a hundred variations of a single colour and possessed a wit that sparkled with panache. In that moment, as time folds in on itself, I relive our childhood in my mind, focusing solely on our magical moments: her chubby cheeks, the echoes of her first laughter, the memory of her tiny feet running down the hallway, our butterfly chases, exchanging clips and toys, and the messy cakes and nonsensical verses we created together. This brief touch of her life—her essence—almost momentarily soothes the pain she has caused me and the cruelty that seemed to flow from her as naturally as steam from boiling water.

Kamala and you should reconcile with Neela,” our mother whispered to me on her deathbed five years ago. Ma battled cancer in her seventies, and family unity meant everything to her, especially because she was estranged from our father, who left her for a younger woman when she was just thirty-two. Whenever we encountered him at our club or a social gathering, he flaunted his new wife and newfound prosperity. “Neela’s issues stem from her deep sense of abandonment. She was only eight when your father left. I couldn’t help her cope with that loss or protect her from external dangers or the turmoil within herself. I know what it feels like to be seen in a distorted way, never truly recognised for who you are. She experienced that pain too.” 

“No, Ma. If Kamala and I reconcile with her, it would heal one wound but open others,” I argued, refusing to entertain any expectations. Ma’s face fell with disappointment. I understood how defeated and broken-hearted she was about our dysfunctional relationship, and how I was denying her emotional validation. This must have been unbearable for her—aware of her deterioration, grappling with the heartbreak of her life slipping away, and knowing her daughters had deliberately fractured their bonds. To add to her anguish, our father would never come to her funeral or lend a hand to his abandoned daughters. It shouldn’t have surprised me when, one day without warning, Ma told Kamala and me, “I have signed over my home, which I inherited from my father, to Neela as compensation for her suffering. I understand this house should be divided equally among the three of you, but please, do not fight with her over this. You and Kamala are married and have your own homes. She has neither a house nor a spouse. As her mother, I have no choice but to acknowledge her suffering and help her heal, for unattended wounds in a daughter can turn. 

Despite everything, the dispossession still stings. The sympathy that Ma showed for Neela brings out something toxic in me. I am sure that Kamala feels irked as well. Will she argue in favour of choicelessness? Will she claim that it was Ma’s decision and that we must respect her wishes? What she says surprises me. “We grew up breathing the air in this house, and although Neela was financially stable, she inherited this house in a sort of twisted irony. Her death feels like a form of redemption—a rebalancing of the cause-and-effect order. Yet, I can’t shake the feeling that she will return any moment now, the subtle folds of her sari swishing as she enters. I can picture her ducking her head to avoid the pendant chandeliers that Ma hung—lights that she unexpectedly chose to keep—while tossing her curls defiantly at them, as if to say, ‘Come get me.’” I turn around involuntarily, expecting to see her.

Kamala is right. We will both now inherit the house after Neela’s death, both according to Ma’s will and the law, but will we ever be at ease with it, considering how miserable Ma was due to our enmity with Neela? Is this the price we will pay for sisterly disaffection? To not have listened to Neela, with the kind of hearing that demands the attention of the heart. “Do you know that as Neela was staying with Ma for years, she used her pre-signed cheques to siphon her money? Do you know these funds were meant for the two of us, if not used for emergencies?” Kamala asks. It is news to me. “She also spirited away all the jewellery Ma left for us. I have seen boxes with both our names inside her safe. She even plied Ma’s bangles as she lay dead in the hospital. This malignant act of hers was the breaking point for me. Her betrayal of trust towards Ma was unforgivable. I vowed never to speak to her again and never did.” I am in shock.

****

“Was Neela’s angst the result of abandonment, as Ma firmly believed?” I want to know. Kamala shakes her head and says, “She was able to infuse violence into the mundane as she lived on another plane of reality from infancy, far removed from our world and worldview. It had nothing to do with our father’s absence or our upbringing. Remember, even when he was with us, she would yell, “Kamala and Nirmala are hitting me,” when we were doing nothing of the sort. She would tear up our books and rob our pencils and erasers. You would wet your bed till you were ten, and she would humiliate you by telling your friends, and she would burn my clothes for reasons known only to her. I remember her feral look as she watched the flames feed on my clothes. There was something maniacal about her since birth. Ma used to say she was terrified as Neela would make strange noises and jerk her body involuntarily as a baby.” 

 I gnaw on my lips. “Though she often smiled, she never seemed to enjoy the lightness of the world. It frustrates me not to understand why. Why couldn’t she feel happiness, affection, and love? Perhaps it was because she struggled psychologically, tormented by worries about things beyond her control. Possibly she didn’t like us, or maybe she felt inferior to our affluent friends. It’s also possible that she was just bored. I can’t help but wonder if her heart failure was a result of her troubled state.

My cellphone rings, but I ignore it and continue, “When she drove a wedge in my marriage by suggesting to Raj that I was in a relationship with his best friend, Amar, I severed all ties with her. She created many falsehoods in Raj’s mind, telling him lies about how I squandered his money and how greedy I was. While I did flirt with Amar, it was harmless social flirting—a playful exchange of words and glances. I will not admit to being a spendthrift or overly eager to make money. My marriage with Raj was already in chaos for unrelated reasons, and for a few perilous months, I feared it would end. I would have been alone, childless as I am, and homeless and penniless as well. Amar, who was travelling when Neela made these allegations, returned to clear the air and reason with Raj. I vividly remember Neela sitting through my outbursts, my anger towards her, with a frosty sneer on her face—a viciously icy expression, with not one pleat in her sari or one curl of her hair out of place.

I reached out for Kamala’s hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I was embarrassed and feared that you would doubt and judge me as well. I worried she had shared my secrets with the world, and in my mortification, I shut myself off from everyone, including you. For years, my nerves were frayed as she stripped me of my dignity. When I finally began to recover, I remained hesitant to engage with you, as I associated our interactions with dealing with her indirectly. Even now, I still feel the weight of many searching, accusing eyes on me.” 

Kamala hugs me and quiets my sobs. She reminds me of my mother. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she says. “I understand now, though I have been furious and bewildered all these years. I suspected this was the reason, but I could never be sure. I never believed Neela, anyway. I wish you could have found a way to tell me your side of the story, or that I had found a way to reach out to you. Please forgive me for being awkward and sulky earlier this evening. Perhaps Neela’s deep fear of being nobody triggered all of this. She tried to jeopardise my relationship with my sons, Tushar and Ashwin, as well, by telling little lies, but her timing was off. My world could have fallen apart like yours, but as surly teenagers, they were too caught up in their own battles to care about my misbehaviour. Bad manners, ingratitude, and disrespect came with their territory, so it was no skin off my nose.”

We laugh. After we quieten down, she says, “We will keep the hate she planted alive only if we continue with the rules of her sad, stunted world. We need to both move on from her. Let’s see her end as a space opening up for us. Let’s use Ma’s home as our meeting ground. I know Neela has left many imprints behind there, and certain parts of her will come to haunt us as phantom limbs, but, having been through so much and now knowing all that we do, we can deal with it together.”

Kamala hands me her bottle of Everlasting Love with Rose Damascena. “Yes, I have been using it all these years to recall and remind myself of our sisterhood.” A smile spreads across my face. “I will wear it when we meet again tomorrow at Ma’s home. Here’s to good times!”

###

Chitra Gopalakrishnan, a writer based in New Delhi, uses her writing to break firewalls between nonfiction and fiction, narratology and psychoanalysis, marginalia and manuscript, and tree-ism and capitalism.